SPECIAL ISSUE
SOCIAL PROCESSES OF ENVIRONMENTAL VALUATION
The social construction of scarcity. The case of water in
Tenerife (Canary Islands)
Federico Aguilera-Klink *
,1, Eduardo Pe´rez-Moriana
2, Juan Sa´nchez-Garcı´a
Department of Applied Economics,Uni6ersity of La Laguna,Campus Guajara,Camino La Hornera s/n,38071 La Laguna,
Tenerife,Canary Islands, Spain
Abstract
Water has traditionally been considered a physically scarce resource in the Canary Islands. Paradoxically, one of the reasons behind the conquest of the Islands in the 15th century was the existence of abundant water which allowed sugar to be grown in Tenerife and Gran Canaria. This article aims to show that the water scarcity in Tenerife is not physical or natural, but rather a socially constructed one, stemming from a set of social processes that reflect the conflicts concerning the desirable kind of society and social order. These processes also consolidate the notion of aquifer and water as a capital asset and commodity, as opposed to the notion of water as an ecosocial asset or common property. The change in mentality with respect to water momentarily led to abundance, with availability multiplying tenfold in less than a century and, at the same time, to the social construction of scarcity, given that the groundwater aquifer was overexploited rapidly because successive changes in the institutional framework were impeded which might have regulated water extraction. The overriding concern was to maintain private ownership of water, even if this entailed eventual exhaustion. We study water shortage as the result of the articulation between the natural system (aquifer) and the social system. © 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords:Water management; Social scarcity; Environmental valuation
www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon
The support of the funding received from DG XII of the European Commission under contract ENV4-CT96-0226 for the project entitled ‘Social Processes for Environmental Valuation: Procedures and Institutions for Social Valuations of Natural Capital in Environmental Conservation and Sustainability Policy (VALSE)’ is gratefully acknowledged, as are the helpful comments of Martin O’Connor and the three journal referees.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +34-922-317012/13; fax: +34-922-253742. E-mail address:faguiler@ull.es (F. Aguilera-Klink).
1Second E-mail address: jusangar@ull.es. 2Research assistant during theVALSEproject.
1. Introduction
It is customary for social scientists to speak of natural resource shortage, which is self-evident if one acknowledges that we live in a finite world. For this reason, the approach we take seeks to study and understand shortage not as a physical statistic or as a point of departure, but rather as the result of the articulation between the physical and social systems, i.e. an arrival point. This articulation can be understood in terms of coevo-lution (Norgaard, 1984), although it should be noted that little mention has been made of the fact that coevolution and coevolutionary develop-ment are not the same thing. Whereas coevolution can lead to a more artificial and vulnerable physi-cal (and by extension social) system, coevolution-ary development would require constant and real institutional change, one that translates into a change in attitudes (thinking habits) and in con-ducts regarding the withdrawal, distribution and use of water which would enable the social system to be maintained and make it compatible with the physical system.
Both options implicitly bring out the kind of questions that need to be addressed if we are to understand the articulation between the two sys-tems. More specifically, in the case of the subject under discussion here (water), we need to examine in greater depth, among other issues, the under-standing of the social processes related to the perception of the causes of scarcity; the forms of participation in the determination of the criteria and institutions for water appropriation and use; the distribution conflicts generated by the forego-ing; knowledge of how the hydrologic cycle func-tions; the role of technologies which reduce water scarcity; and the capacity to evaluate the implicit technological risks of said technologies (such as where desalination of brackish water from the sea allows more sea water to enter and deteriorate aquifers), etc. These are questions related in part to scientific and technological knowledge and partly also to power, that is, the social conflict between the values and interests at stake, how this conflict is addressed by society and how society, in reaching a consensus, defines which problem is socially and politically relevant and, lastly, what
society understands and accepts as a socially ade-quate solution.
In the case of Tenerife we endeavour to show that, as compared to the widespread and widely-accepted notion of the physical scarcity of water, the notion of socially constructed scarcity is more relevant and has greater explanatory power. To do so, we will examine the social processes that have led to the creation of this type of scarcity. In the first part of the paper, we show the existence of a constant social conflict over distribution, arising out of the criteria used to appropriate and then distribute surface water. These criteria fa-voured in particular those with some degree of power, who from the 18th century onwards took for themselves public and communal water, and went unpunished in the process. In the second part we examine the process of the privatisation and exploitation of groundwater. This was done using the ‘catchment’ rule and at the expense of rapid exhaustion of surface water, so much so that the documents from the 19th century speak literally of drilling ‘fever’. Thirdly, we look at the uncontrolled drilling of underground aquifers, a process carried out under the formal umbrella of numerous Water Laws, which in practice merely sought to ensure that private ownership was maintained. This was not always the result given that more recognition was given to withdrawal rights than to the groundwater aquifer’s recharge and accumulation capacity. Although it is true that groundwater availability did increase enor-mously, it was at the expense of a multiplication of the number of drillings (many of which hardly produced water), more expensive withdrawal (competitive rather than cooperative drilling, due to an intensification of the catchment rule) and the continued depletion of the aquifer. Lastly, we examine the importance of the valuation of the social processes which form the notions of water and water scarcity in order to complete the water valuation exercise.
2. Tenerife water resources: the case study
erup-tions (early this century). In spite of its small size (2034 km2), it has a wide variety of local climates
which make for enormous variations in rainfall (from 100 mm on the south coast to over 900 mm in the highest northern and northeastern parts) and the resulting difficulties in calculating the true amount that filters down to the aquifer. Indeed, experts from the Tenerife Water Council are just now beginning to admit that the data used to determine water balances are rather hazy as re-gards the levels of evapotranspiration and infiltra-tion, as can be seen in Table 1. In just 5 years, the calculations have had to be corrected by around 50%. Doubts also surround the amount of water withdrawn from the aquifer. The reason is that private water owners are against the Canarian government’s plans to fit meters to measure with-drawal directly and the authorities are not strong enough to enforce a mandatory meter scheme.
Tenerife’s current hydrologic system is made up of a groundwater aquifer which is the remains of a broader — surface and groundwater — system that was ruined by constant overexploitation dur-ing the last century and the present one. Usable recharge — the sum of natural infiltration plus irrigation returns less natural coastal underground run off — is less than the volume of withdrawals. Hence, withdrawals more or less eat into reserves and gradually lower the water table. The immedi-ate result is a reduction in the volume of wimmedi-ater strikes (Tenerife Water Plan, 1993).
In Tenerife, the following phases in the hydro-logic ‘cycle’ can be discerned:
Contributions to the aquifer. These include the
following direct and indirect sources: vertical rain (some of which filters down into the aquifer, some evaporates and some reaches the
sea); horizontal rain, generated by trade-winds in contact with vegetation (however, the true amount involved does not figure in the water balances because there is no precise evaluation methodology); desalination of sea-water with fossil energy; purification of urban waste water for agricultural use.
The extraction of underground water. This is
done using wells and galleries (which are hori-zontal, although slightly sloped to allow grav-ity outlet of the water), or a combination of both, such as when a horizontal gallery is constructed at the bottom of wells. To give an idea of the type of drilling, conventional gal-leries usually measure 3 km on average, but many are in fact over 5 km long. The most productive wells are between 170 and 300 m. Tenerife is riddled with over a thousand hori-zontal galleries, totalling between them some 1620 km, and over 400 wells with a combined depth of approximately 52 km.
The distribution of water. The main feature of
the distribution networks, both agricultural and urban, is their extensive deterioration (with some exceptions, such as the capital, Santa Cruz de Tenerife), which causes considerable water loss, in some cases over 50% of the amount actually distributed.
Uses of water. Farming is the biggest consumer
of water, accounting for over 50% of the total (109.2 Hm3 in 1991). Agriculture is a vital
sector both in terms of its repercussions on the land and its cultural connotations. 46 000 Ha are devoted to farming land, taken up for the most part by irrigation crops for export (ba-nana and tomatoes mainly). These crops ac-count for over 50% of cropland. Household use accounts for 30% (62.7 Hm3 in 1991), while
water consumption in the tourist areas is less than 10% of the total (14.1 Hm3
) (Tenerife Water Plan, 1993). While water consumption by the farm sector has been falling of late (due to the low financial return of farming com-pared to other activities and, secondly, the introduction of water-saving technologies in new irrigation systems), both household con-sumption (due to population growth) and that of the tourist areas (rise in the number of Table 1
Water balance HM3/YRa
1993 1998
aSource: Tenerife Water Plan, 1993 and 1999 (personal
Table 2
Water consumption in Tenerife, Projection 2000a
Consumption Year 2000 Variation (%) 1991–2000
(%) Hm3
2.6 1.21
Non used resources −42.22
11.1 5.16
Losses in water −3.48
transfers
Agricultural use 96.8 44.96 −11.36
Urban use 69.6 32.33 11.00
10.87 23.4
Tourism use 65.96
5.48
11.8 122.64
Industrial use
10 000 3.86
Total 215.3
aSource: Tenerife Water Plan (1993).
rural minority allowed it to control (nominate) political offices. However, for this ‘social order’ to be maintained, social cohesion mechanisms (or cushioning) were needed, first and foremost among them common and public ownership of water and land. Hence, although after the con-quest of the Canaries (15th century) the Spanish Crown distributed and granted (for private use but without private ownership) water and land, both with restrictions, a large proportion of these waters and lands were common and public heritage.
As is well known, although this property for-mat allowed the Ancien Regime to be maintained, it satisfied neither rich nor poor. It curtailed the possibilities of the former to open new mercantile activities and obtain greater profits — which were restricted because of the limited availability of the different types of property — and it imposed difficult living conditions on the latter, in spite of the existence of this more common form of ownership.
It was against this backdrop that the ideas of the Enlightenment gained ground. These may be summed up as the glorification of private interests as the sole motor and destiny of all economic activity and the need for unrestricted competition by economic and social agents as the most ade-quate form of allocating resources to social neces-sities. The application of these ideas required institutional change, a break with the previous institutional framework, and necessitated also the shaping of content for a new one which would allow free trade to enable the country to progress. Here ‘progress’ means using (for crops) the lands and waters not used commercially (common prop-erty) or in the hands of the church, and at the same time making available to the State an impor-tant source of finance for public spending. For its part, nature was viewed as a capital asset avail-able for human exploitation (Harvey, 1996).
In the case of the Canaries, in addition to the above, it is important to note the corresponding economic incentive of export crops, which since the Conquest had been one of the basic pillars of the Canarian economy and society, and needed new arable land and water for irrigation. Al-though much land was disentailed, the economic holidaymakers) have increased in recent years.
The consumption levels forecast for the year 2000 by Tenerife’s Water Plan point to a con-siderable rise in urban and tourism use (Table 2):
The resident population in 1996 was some 690 000, to which one has to add the 2 993 084 tourists who between them spent over 25 million nights on the island.
3. Appropriation and distribution of surface water. Social conflicts and the strengthening of the idea of private property
and social results of the successive disentailments (1836 and 1855) did not fulfil expectations (Ojeda, 1977). Indeed, one could say that property be-came more concentrated than before the process and the situation of those who had neither water nor land worsened considerably. The cushioning mechanism that existed in the form of common property had been eliminated. Besides, the rapid collapse of some export crops in the Canaries triggered the highest rate of emigration in the region’s history (1835 – 1855), with many heading for Cuba and Puerto Rico. Although surface wa-ter was initially allocated to the land on which it fell, the challenging of the notion of property (both public and common) encouraged owners of land without water for irrigation to seek a means of obtaining it. Here, following Nieto (1968), we can distinguish two ways of appropriating surface water.
The first was to ask municipal governments with surplus water — once urban supply has been guaranteed — for a concession, with a volume similar to that of the surplus water. The problem arose when these concessions were distorted by those who obtained them and then claimed full ownership of the water granted. According to Nieto (1968), the mechanisms most commonly used to generate this distortion were as follows: (a) ‘to convert the concession of surpluses of public water into private property encumbered with an unavoidable obligation in favour of the neighbours’, which is then disputed and denied; (b) perversion of the original title ‘at the time of its constitution by a real fiddling of concepts’; and (c) perversion of the original title ‘as a conse-quence, in conclusion, of a phenomenon of hy-postasis’. The previous mechanisms led to the private appropriation of surface water usurping the rights of use contained in the aforementioned concessions.
The second was to buy at public auction disen-tailed lands with a given volume of surface water allocation which was initially set according to crop water needs. The philosophy underlying Dis-entailment was to challenge a social organisation that was based on privilege and governed by the power of large properties that barely created ‘commercial wealth’, and thus to allow those with
less power to create opportunities for economic activities through exploitation of land and water. The results obtained, however, were a far cry from those initially sought because only the rich were in a position to buy — or to take possession of — water and land. Moreover, the situation worsened for the majority due to the disappear-ance of common land and (surface) water which they might have been able to use free of charge to improve their lot.
Among the disentailed lands, forest areas were sold off fraudulently by means of deliberately false classification of the woods as uncultivated land. This was the official response to the request of certain sectors of Canarian society (Royal Eco-nomic Society of Friends of Las Palmas Area in 1868) who asked that forests should not switch to private hands in the disentailment process: ‘‘The destruction of trees without replanting will kill the forests, this natural heritage of the air, water, land and spontaneous production. Destroying the forest destroys springs, humidity and fertility’’ (quoted by Ojeda, 1977). In a way this perception reflects scientific knowledge of the environmental functions performed by forests and also the need to protect these functions for the benefit of society in general and not just for a few private owners. Since both ways were insufficient to meet the growing agricultural needs arising out of the ex-pansion of agriculture at the end of the 19th century, a third way commenced, one involving the private appropriation of groundwater.
4. Appropriation and distribution of groundwater. From public and common property to ‘common pool’
It should be noted that, as far back as 1873, debate had already commenced among the En-lightened as to the consequences drilling for
groundwater would have for surface water
was to drill for groundwater. Within a short space of time, 1000 applications for licences were filed in Gran Canaria, thus opening the debate on the relationship between surface water and groundwa-ter, and also on the extension of existing rights over surface water to groundwater. Documents of the time speak literally of ‘water fever’ in describing the situation. Behind this fever was a desire to place Nature at man’s service and to use early machinery to drill for groundwater. As a result, in much disentailed land groundwater was appropri-ated, even though this represented a total lack of regard for and usurpation of rights over surface water.
It must be said that the extraction of groundwa-ter did increase the volume of wagroundwa-ter available for agricultural uses and encouraged an increase in farm activity, although in doing so it caused the disappearance (drying up) of public sources and springs, i.e. of surface water. Thus, even if the ‘economic’ result is positive for those who with-drew groundwater and sold it to farmers, legally speaking it is a second usurpation or ‘a real and massive usurpation’ that entirely alters the owner-ship of water — some of which was also the result of usurpation, as we saw above — and the previ-ous owners of surface water were displaced by the new water owners (Nieto, 1968; 106). Another result was that most of the island’s springs dried up and, although in the 18th century the entire popu-lation usually had enough water, in fact they were forced to buy it from the ‘new owners’.
Water became consolidated — out of necessity, albeit in a very favourable ideological context (the Enlightenment) — as yet another commodity, and the search for and extraction of groundwater be-came an important and risky (uncertain result) activity at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Once most of the surface water courses had disappeared due to the spiralling increase in underground drilling, which was fa-voured by the privatising philosophy of Disentail-ment, water became a private good and now had to be taken from underground. This property right was exercised only through extraction, applying the catchment rule — i.e. if I don’t extract it, someone else will — because there was only one aquifer and there was great interdependence
be-tween the extractions. Waters that had been com-mon and public property were thus transformed into individual private property, but without clearly-defined property rights (common pool) since it was impossible to know: (a) whether the drilling would hit water; (b) the volume of water that could be withdrawn; and (c) the volume of water that could be maintained over time. Hence the beginnings of an all out ‘race’ or fever for water withdrawal. Within a few years a situation of physical scarcity (there was little water to satisfy the needs created by the new commercial export crops) was transformed into a situation of socially-conditioned scarcity (explained by a given social behaviour in the models of water withdrawal, distribution and use).
This activity led to the eventual creation of companies with capital to finance the purchase of expensive steam-driven drilling machinery, in turn leading to better knowledge of the hydrogeological workings of the aquifer. However, the social confl-ict surrounding the legal appropriation of water — or the unpunished usurpation thereof — has per-sisted until the present day, mainly because people (a minority, it must be said) question how a resource as badly needed as water could be owned privately, can generate an impressive business in-cluding speculation in the sale of water and, be-sides, be tax-free. Still, this conflict did not deter (‘willingness to play’) many from putting their small savings (and frequently losing them, because no water was found) in this new activity. There was always the hope of finding a small water supply, which would provide irrigation for a small plot and would earn a fee when sold. A clear social percep-tion existed that water owners were very powerful and that, in an essentially agricultural economy, if you did not have water and could not buy it, emigration was the sole alternative.
Although the whole process was based on usurpation, one of the chief worries of the ‘new owners’ was how to obtain legal recognition (legit-imacy) of the new property redefining the institu-tional capital.3 They did not find it too difficult
3Stock of rules and underlying human organizational skills
to pressure the country’s lawmakers and thus obtain the ‘acquired’ rights in the new laws affect-ing water (Water Act of 1866, Mines’ Act of 1868, Water Act of 1879). Ultimately, once the heredi-tary, individualistic concept of underground water was imposed, it led to permanent conflict over rights between landowners and water withdraw-ers, to the detriment of ‘the stable economic con-tent of the property’ and the social use of the water. In the middle of the present century this conflict (which was not an obstacle to the respec-tive private interests in the Canaries) made it necessary to draw up and apply regulations (1956 Landed Property Law — Heredamientos) to ac-commodate the conflicting interests of landowners and water entrepreneurs. The accommodation also served to deter untrustworthy public law experts from exposing and denouncing the social consequences of the system, including the poten-tial for serious abuse on the part of the landown-ers and those withdrawing the water.
5. Uncontrolled drilling of the underground aquifer: application to the full of the catchment rule
Up until the end of the 19th century mining fever dominated, with the following stages dis-cernible in the exploitation of the aquifer (Tener-ife Water Plan, 1989):
Stage 1: 1850 – 1910. Extraction of groundwater
begins, with 90% of galleries opened in areas
with natural springs, resulting from hanging aquifers. Many of these became exhausted.
Stage 2: 1910 – 1930. Galleries reach the aquifer
core. Slight lowering of water table. The island becomes virtually dependent on groundwater.
Stage 3: 1930 – 1945. Exploitation of aquifer
core begins to affect volume of reserves. Water table lowered by over 100 m in areas with highest concentration of galleries.
Stage 4: 1945 – 1965. Gallery system for
groundwater extraction spreads throughout is-land. 90% of current galleries opened by 1965. Extracted volume reaches 7000 l/s, compared to 700 l/s for surface water in 19th century. Sharp fall in water levels. Uppermost galleries begin to dry up.
Stage 5: 1965 – present day. Total extracted
vol-ume reaches ceiling, and constant fall of over 2000 l/s seen over last two decades (Table 3). The problem is that the institutional framework regulating surface water use was done away with and replaced by one which, in practice, encour-ages open access to the aquifer. Moreover, to date the various Water Acts have merely brought for-mal institutional change, but have not enriched the institutional capital since they fail to acknowl-edge the existence of coevolution or coevolution-ary development. Rather, they assume evolution in the sense of a lack of real articulation between the physical and social systems. The reason is that although they regulate drillings (which required a public concession and had to be physically sepa-rate in terms of space) and extractions, they main-tained free access because, in practice, no control is exercised over water withdrawals even today in 1999. Indeed, there are no public statistics show-ing how much is withdrawn by each well or gallery.
In sum, throughout the history and manage-ment of Tenerife’s aquifer the maintenance of a kind of institutional capital (and the ensuing in-centives) has been assured and this has permitted the transition from a situation of permanent po-tential water availability (sustainable aquifer man-agement) to one of scarcity which is socially determined in terms of aquifer depletion. The combination of entrepreneurial risk-taking, inno-vative technological development in the physical Table 3
Volume withdrawn (groundwater)a
Total km drilled Volume (l/s)
Year
1930 1500 100
1940 2000 220
1950 4600 480
5600
1960 830
1965 7000 1.040
6300
1970 1.180
5200 1.450
1980
1990 4700 1.550
1998 4250 1.630
Table 4
Distribution of water ownership in La Isla Baja, Tenerife (1975)a
Owners Shares Owners Shares Accumulated
Amount of Accumulated
(%) (pi)
shares (%) (pi) (%) (qi) (%) (qi) owners (%) shares (%)
8265 2.66
Less than 1 18 0.14 2.66 0.14
1–2 165 183 155 24.41 3.19 27.07 3.33
247 553 16.57 4.31 43.64 7.64
2–3 112
288 414 12.87 5.02
87 56.51
3–4 12.66
181 943 6.36 3.17
4–5 43 62.87 15.82
800 742 17.31 13.93
117 80.18
5–10 29.75
51
10–15 605 178 7.54 10.53 87.72 40.28
557 119 4.73 9.69
32 92.46
15–20 49.98
10
20–25 225 334 1.48 3.92 93.93 53.90
25–30 8 216 958 1.18 3.77 95.12 57.67
658 116 2.66 11.45
18 97.78
30–50 69.12
590 917 1.33 10.28
50–100 9 99.11 79.40
1183.85 0.89 20.60
6 100.00
More than 100 100.00
676
S 5747.544 100.00 100.00
aSource: Aguilera and Nunn (1989).
capital used and increases in the level of ground-water output capacity led groundground-water resources from a stage of socially determined surplus (com-plex water resource cycle) to one of full utilisation in a relatively short period of time (simplification of such complexity) (Hanna, 1997). This situation can be illustrated in the following terms: low or no-control over the levels of extraction of natural capital; high rate of application of physical tal; and relatively undeveloped institutional capi-tal for sustainable path management.
The social legitimisation of this water appropri-ation process is currently defended on grounds that equal opportunities now exist for everyone and water ownership is divided up extensively. Although information in this respect is scant, a sample obtained (Table 4) indicates that water ownership is distributed very unequally, with a handful of owners having much of the water and a large number of small owners having very little. This unequal distribution has very important im-plications for water control, since it indicates that the handful of big owners have extensive powers to: (a) fix prices; (b) fix the rules of the game with respect to withdrawal; (c) establish the distribu-tion condidistribu-tions; (d) guide any rule changes; (e) break the rules with impunity; and (f) influence the dominant social perception of the water
prob-lem. In short, the major owners can be said to be the holders of structural power.
The history of Tenerife’s water has thus been, to borrow from Hanna’s terminology, a move-ment ‘‘from the stewardship needs of ecosystem sustainability to the growth phase of frontier de-velopment; movement which has proceeded in the presence of two powerful underlying tensions: economy versus the environment and individual versus the community’’. That movement has been reinforced by a path dependence technology pro-cess (drilling and pumping technologies in the first phase, with desalination and water treatment technologies added in the second) and an evolu-tion of property rights regimes, where those are attained at the point of the resource capture and where the decisions on resource use are made by individuals who interact with other resource de-velopers only through the depletion effect of the aquifer (Goodstein, 1995; Hanna, 1997).
Physical evidence of the above-mentioned movement can be seen in Tables 5 and 6.
Table 5
Extracted volume (groundwater)a
Year Physical yield (m3/day/km drilled)
1930 1269
1940 769
811 1950
571 1960
1965 569
452 1970
303 1980
1990 257
221 1998
aSource: Tenerife Water Council (personal communication).
and the new technologies for desalinating brack-ish water have had very damaging effects on the aquifer, as evidenced in wells where previously exploitation would cease when the water quality worsened as a result of intrusion by sea water beyond certain limits (mainly the minimum qual-ity required for irrigation use) but which are now being exploited again thanks to the new technolo-gies that help perpetuate the damage to the aquifer (one single well contaminated by sea water intrusion can lead to the contamination of an entire and vast area). At present, the authorities require a detailed study and compliance with cer-tain minimum water quality conditions before they will grant a licence for a brackish water desalination installation at the bottom of a well. Very often, however, the authorities are unable to exercise control due to resistance by the well owners. As a result, situations that are disastrous for the aquifer are not avoided and wells are being exploited which are totally contaminated by sea water intrusion.
6. Water perceptions and environmental valuation as a social process
Given all the above, it seems to us very impor-tant to emphasise — as has already been said — that the most common social perception of the problem of water is essentially linked to a gener-alised notion of physical scarcity, i.e. the belief how the number of kilometres drilled has
multi-plied. The consequence of this massive drilling has been not just a fall in the yield of the galleries and wells, but also an alarming reduction in the aquifer (in some places clearly irreversible). Avail-able data on the evolution of underground extrac-tions of water, both in galleries and in wells, as well as the evolution of the springs (a natural indicator of the state of the aquifer in as much as springs function as aquifer regulators) corrobo-rate the above statements. It can be seen that, in the period observed, the choice made has been for exploitation by wells. Given the state of the aquifer this seems consistent as the coastal areas are the least affected by over-exploitation. The reduction in the yields is seen, however, in both types of exploitation. It should be said also that advances in techniques (pumping and drilling)
Table 6
Evolution of wells, galleries (number, drilled meters, flows and physical return), Tenerife, 1973–90a
Galleries Wells
1990 Var. 73–90 1990 Var. 73–90
1973 1980 1973 1980
(%) (%)
986 50.17
437 6.19
370 291
No 1001 1047
1 627 000 22.61 27 000 52 000
Drilled 14 000 271.43 1 327 000 1 453 000
meters
78.624 133.661 134.784 71.43 548.640
m3/day 487 555.2 445 824 −18.74
m3/day/drille 5616 4950 2592 −53.85 0.413 0.336 0.274 −33.72
d m.
that the water scarcity is due to ‘natural reasons’ (for example, low rainfall), and not to the idea of social scarcity, i.e. the scarcity has more to do with the application of a particular rationale that renders some conducts and some social processes ‘legitimate’. In other words, our considerations would suggest that the problem of water (water valuation) can only be adequately understood by studying the social processes responsible for said conduct and for the guidelines for extraction, distribution and use. Only then will we be in a position to understand why this social perception does or does not exist, and the different types of social perception that do exist. We cannot carry out a water valuation from the perspective of social processes without, at the same time, valuat-ing the social processes behind the notion of water and water scarcity. One could say that an under-standing of social processes is needed for water (environmental) valuation and an understanding of the environment (water) is needed for social process valuation.
Even though water is turned into a commodity, it has to be said that the social perception related to water is actually multi-dimensional, condi-tioned, fragmented and complex. Put another way, it should first be clarified what is meant — and what we mean — by social perception in the case of water, because we may be referring to different things at one and the same time. We should not forget that water means different things for different people, and the perception may be so different that everyone can point to a different quality or aspect of water or of its cycle. Thus, an urban user who has been influenced by ‘save water’ campaigns may have a perception of the water problem in terms of physical scarcity, but may not realise (or know) that urban distribu-tion networks lose more than 50 percent of their water (Tenerife Water Plan, 1993). Nor will they be aware that, until recently, in winter water was usually discharged into the sea so that the price did not fall in the summer (Cruz, 1958) or that the aquifer is deteriorating irreversibly (Braojos, 1988). Moreover, it is difficult to understand that the very techniques put forward as a solution to the alleged physical scarcity — such as desalina-tion of sea water with fossil energy — will have
potentially serious environmental impacts that could lead to an increasingly artificial hydrologic cycle, with ever-growing costs in terms of mainte-nance, energy dependence, and the environment. Which is why we consider these proposed solu-tions as ‘non-solusolu-tions’, in the sense that they do not involve coevolutionary development, nor are they sustainable. Consequently, in order to be able to speak of the social perception of water we must first define what we mean when we speak of water.
The physical renewability of water can be im-paired by human behaviour in two ways: convert-ing what used to be renewable into somethconvert-ing exhaustible, either by extracting more water than is collected through precipitation; or by interfer-ing in the workinterfer-ings of biochemical cycles through the various types of pollution, which would in-clude global warming. Secondly, although the hy-drologic cycle itself functions with renewable energy, most of the energy used thus far to repro-duce the cycle artificially (mainly for sea water desalination) comes from fossil sources, which are exhaustible. This not only considerably limits any attempt to generalise the use of desalination plants, but also poses the problem of the gas emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.
Any valuation made of the reserves or
Where this is not the case, desalination of sea water would exacerbate the exhaustion of fossil resources and increase CO2 emissions.
Just as with other environmental questions, per-ception is rendered difficult because, in the West-ern world at least, most people live in the artificial environmental medium formed by cities, and as ‘‘most of the population reacts mainly with this medium, which is increasingly interposed between man and nature, the illusion is created that each time one is less dependent on it’’ (Sunkel, 1980; 19). The perception at urban user level is thus very limited and fragmented, i.e. it refers almost exclusively to the quality and continuity of tap water, with no relation to the hydrologic cycle. This perception is quite normal given that ‘‘in economically developed countries, the emotional relationship with water has been obscured because of the smooth working of the institutions which make sure that the water supply is guaranteed; the availability of water just requires turning on the tap. In economically developed countries, how-ever, when the control of water is in danger, the force of the emotional returns’’ (Brown and In-gram, 1987; 197 – 198). Moreover, not even the ‘scientific body’ has one sole perception about groundwater and about how the aquifer works. On the contrary, the debate, in its many facets (legal, hydrogeological, economic, etc.) is open and on many occasions is confused, ambiguous and contradictory. One could say therefore that groundwater can be viewed, according to Fun-towicz and Ravetz (1993), as a problem character-ised by uncertainty, conflict of values and interests, the importance of what is at stake and by the urgency (the need for quality information) of decision-making.
In the case of Tenerife, drilling, pumping, de-salination and water treatment technologies are now firmly entrenched and have secured the water supply from the tap for any use, with no account taken of aquifer sustainability management. Pol-icy has been nudging the choice of technology along a non-sustainable track. The water problem in the Canaries can be described as a case of ‘organised irresponsibility’, to use Beck’s term (Beck, 1991). The appearance given is that every-thing is under control and water problems are
rarely mentioned. Indeed one can read that the Canaries have been successfully resolving all such problems (Hoyos, 1997; Simpson and Ringskog, 1997), and can now ‘‘offer our experience, our knowledge and our techniques to help in the always difficult and stormy ‘sea’ of world water resources’’ (Alsina, 1997). In other words, official water policy is really a ‘‘symbolic policy of decon-tamination’’, that is, a policy which has hindered the social perception of the water problem and therefore the capacity for ‘collective understand-ing’ (Vatn and Bromley, 1993; 143).
7. Conclusions
sustainable management of the aquifer, and yet at the same time acknowledges something which is totally incompatible with this goal, namely, recog-nition of private ownership for the next 75. The permissive implementation of the Act reflects an implicit accord between water owners and certain politicians, whereby groundwater is the property of the owners until it is exhausted, and the au-thorities undertake to invest heavily in small reservoirs to store the winter surpluses of rainfall, in waste water treatment and in sea water desali-nation. The prevailing approach now is that aquifer management is outdated and what are important now are new technologies, particularly those for desalination. This approach has resulted in, on the one hand, a reinforcement of water owners’ power (‘water is ours’) and, on the other, the search for technological ‘solutions’ to the problems of social scarcity in order to avoid having to challenge water owners’ vested interests. It has resulted ultimately in a diminished social perception of water problems. However, the so-called technological ‘solutions’ (sea and brackish water desalination using fossil energy), although (temporarily) reducing social conflict over the wa-ter issue, generate new conflicts and risks — which are not perceived immediately — such as increased atmospheric pollution and increased aquifer deterioration due to the rise in the pump-ing of brackish water.
With regard to the social perspective, a range of environmental valuation methods of a more or less experimental nature can be deployed, among them focus groups, citizen jury and multicriteria analysis, and can be used as a support tool in a decision-making process. In the case of ground-water in Tenerife (Canary Islands), key decisions were already made some years ago. A proper understanding of the multi-dimensional evolution-ary process at play in the Tenerife case has re-quired an explanation of the historical context, to show how current values and interests have been shaped; how conflict identification and resolution with respect to the water resource have evolved; the nature of the decisions concerning distribu-tions of income resulting from the social processes of water; how access or non-access to environ-mental resources and services such as water has
been determined; how technological risk, environ-mental hazards and possible future scarcities have been addressed; the political choices behind the institutions and the forms of compromise in the social processes that have defined water environ-mental valuation in Tenerife.
Any serious option to confront the situation of ‘organised irresponsibility’ requires the opening of public discussion fora to facilitate the diffusion of information and to allow the re-creation of a social perception which was lost some years ago. This would serve to build a collective understand-ing of the problems associated with sustainable management of the aquifer as well as the eco-nomic, social and environmental implications of maintaining the current situation.
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